Lately I've been a bad blogger, but I've had good reason. Last week as part of my fundraising for my Team in Training event and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society I threw a Hawaiian Feast. I spent a fairly sizable amount of time menu planning, finding door prize donors, creating gift certificates, coordinating volunteers, making signs, etc. It was more work than I imagined (but in the end it was totally worth it). This left me with little energy for cooking much less blogging.
The menu for the feast consisted of lots of yummy traditional Hawaiian food. Here's what I prepared (with the help of some great volunteers):
Spam Musubi (think sushi but with fried spam instead of fish)
Ahi Poke (pronounced po-kay)
Kalua Pork
Chicken Luau
White Rice
Hawaiian Macaroni Salad (trust me, it's different from mainland macaroni salad)
Tropical Fruit
Cupcakes (from New York Cupcakes, delicious)
I also made Haupia which is a coconut milk pudding/gelatin concoction, but it never set so I couldn't serve it.
My favorites from the night were the Kalua Pork and the Ahi Poke. I thought I would pass along the recipes.
Traditionally at a luau the Kalua Pork would be a whole pig, cooked all day in an underground imu. Obviously that is not practical for most cooks. I used pork shoulder which is not only cheap, but also very tasty. This recipe is from Epicurious.
Kalua Pork
5 pound boneless pork butt roast
2 Tablespoon Hawaiian sea salt or course sea salt
3 frozen banana leaves, thawed
4 cup Water
-Sauce
2 cup water
2 teaspoon Hawaiian sea salt or course sea salt
1/2 teaspoon liquid smoke
Instructions: Preheat oven to 350°F. Using small sharp knife, cut 1/4-inch-deep slits 1 inch apart all over pork roast. Rub 2 tablespoons sea salt all over pork. Unfold 1 banana leaf on work surface and place pork roast atop leaf. Fold up leaf around pork, enclosing completely. Repeat wrapping pork in remaining 2 banana leaves, 1 at a time.
Tie with kitchen string to secure, then wrap roast in foil. Place pork in roasting pan; pour 4 cups water into pan.
Roast pork in oven until very tender when pierced with fork, about 5 hours. Unwrap pork and cool slightly. Shred pork and place in large bowl.
Bring remaining 2 cups water and remaining 2 teaspoons salt to boil in small saucepan. Add liquid smoke; pour over pork and stir to blend. Let stand 10 minutes to allow liquid to flavor pork. Serve.
Ingredient tip: Hawaiian alaea sea salt is available at specialty foods stores and online from Hawaii Specialty Salt Company at hawaiisalt.com. Banana leaves are available at Asian markets and Latin markets. Liquid smoke is a smoke-flavored liquid seasoning available at many supermarkets and specialty foods stores.
My other favorite from the night was the Ahi Poke. There are lots of different recipes around for Poke, but the one I used came from a blog called Chaos in the Kitchen. Click the link to see her beautiful poke photo (which in the end was a large part of the reason I chose that recipe). I used frozen Ahi Tuna (QFC had donated a gift card for me to use for the event and frozen was all they had) and it actually turned out great (and was substantially less expensive than fresh would have been). I cut the tuna into 1/2 squares while it was still partially frozen which made it really easy to do. My version of the recipe makes 12-16 appetizer size servings.
Hawaiian Poke
16 ounce sushi-grade tuna
1/2 sweet or red onion, julienned
2 green onion, diced
1/4 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated
2 clove garlic, minced
2 Tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
2 teaspoon black sesame seeds (or toasted)
Combine onion, green onion, ginger, garlic, soy sauce, sesame seeds and oil in a bowl.
Add bite sized pieces of tuna, mix well.
Chill the mixture for 15 minutes before serving so flavors can mix. Check for salt before serving, the soy sauce can be pretty salty without needing any additional salt.
Now that my event is in the books I can get back to blogging. I picked up my CSA box yesterday and I've already got some ideas brewing about what to make. A new entry will be coming soon, I promise.
P.S. I raised $706 for LLS with the Hawaiian Feast. A little less than I was hoping for, but not too bad. The thing that really touched me was the willingness of my friends to give of their time and talents to help make my event a success. Some friends gave amazing door prizes, others spent hours in the kitchen helping me prep and serve, another spent the evening as our DJ (setting an awesome tropical mood) and a few helped collect money at the door, sell raffle tickets and bar tend. I could not have had a successful event without all of their help.
Labels: Asian, pork, seafood, TNT
Other than one meal when my mom visited during December I cannot recall having cooked at home in almost a month. First I was sick (really, really sick) and the little that I did eat was made (read warmed up) by my husband. Then I got busy with work (which, since I am a chef, involved lots of cooking) so I really wasn't up to cooking when I got home (so lots of take-out). Then we went out of town (which is exhausting under the best of cases). I even cancelled delivery of one of my boxes because I knew I would get to it.I woke up this morning determined to cook. I picked up our box yesterday so I knew I would have lots of delicious new produce to choose from (plus, I still have lots of root veggies, which take much longer to go bad, stashed away too).After a delicious "ladies lunch" out with one of my best friends and my Goddaughter I stopped by the QFC to pick up some sort of protein. Torn between chicken, pork or lamb I texted the husband for advice. Pork (with applesauce) was the reply (although I knew applesauce was not to be in the husband's future). I considered a pork roast, then a pork loin before spying some thick-cut pork chops in the butcher's case. Alas, they were boneless (and meat cooked on the bone is just better) so I asked the butcher to cut some special for me, bone-in, about 1 1/2 inch thick.So, pork decided as the protein, I took a look in the fridge and pantry for potential counterparts. I turned up some garnet yams, and some pears (as a stand-in to the applesauce the husband wanted). I snipped a little sage from the herb garden and I was on my way.Here's the ingredients:For the briny pork chops:
2 Tablespoon kosher salt2 Tablespoon sugar6 leaves sage3/4 cup water2 thick-cut bone-in pork chopsFor the sage-roasted yams:
1/2 pound yams (garnet or otherwise)2 Tablespoons or so olive oil10 leaves sage3 cloves garlic, lightly smashedsalt and peppera cast-iron pan (trust me, this is important)For the caramelized pears:
2 Tablespoon butter2 pears, peeled and chopped2 Tablespoons sugarjuice and zest from 1/2 Meyer lemon1/4 teaspoon saltNow, I was cooking everything at once, so these instructions are gonna jump around a bit.I started by making a brine for the pork chops. I combined the sugar and the sage leaves in a mortar and used a pestle to crush and bruise the sage a bit.
I then put this into a Ziploc bag, added the sugar and the water and shook the mixture until the sugar and salt had dissolved. Then I added the pork chops and tossed the bag in the fridge for a couple of hours (turning it once).A half hour before I was set to cook, I removed the pork chops from the brine, dried them off, then set them aside for a bout a half hour so the middles of them wouldn't be too cold when I cooked them.Next I put the potatoes in the oven. Here they are all sliced up and ready to go.
The potatoes were inspired by a blog entry from the Food52 Website. I followed the method just about verbatim so I won't repeat it here (but they took about 45 minutes total). I haven't tried it with regular potatoes (as it is written) but that will be up very soon.As soon as I put the potatoes in the oven, I heated up a grill pan, then brushed the outsides of the chops with a little olive oil and some salt and pepper. I seared the chops on one side, then flipped them and put them in the oven (alongside the potatoes) until they reached an internal temperature of 150 degrees (yeah, I know, USDA says 160 degrees, but that's just gonna result in dry pork chops). They took about 25 minutes to cook through and they were done before the potatoes, so I just took them out of the oven and covered them with some foil until the potatoes were done too (at least five minutes of resting is important anyway).Once everything was in the oven I started on the caramelized pears. I started by melting the butter in a saucepan over medium-high heat. I added the chopped pears and sauteed for about 5 minutes. Then I added the lemon zest and juice, the sugar and the salt and continued to cook the pears until they were golden brown and delicious.To serve, I plated a few of the potatoes alongside a ginourmous pork chop then topped the pork with some of the caramelized pears, a bit of the tasty caramelizing sauce and a few of the crispy sage leaves.
How was it? Well, basically the whole time I was eating I was saying "nom, nom, nom this is so good". The husband agreed and said that the caramelized pears were way better than any applesauce would be.This is definitely a case where really simple ingredients, cooked well, resulted in something fantastic.Labels: pears, pork, potatoes, winter
A few months ago, sometime in late June, my friend Irene called me one evening. She had this wacky idea to cook a suckling pig. Her original thought was to cook it for the 4th of July party that she and her husband throw each year. Just two problems, one, we have too many vegetarian friends that attend their 4th of July Party (we thought they might take offense to dinner having a face). Secondly, she thought their house might be a little small to accommodate that kind of meal.
We both whipped out our calendars to find a date that would work for both of us. With our travel and some of our intended guests travel, the first date that we could come up with was Sept. 26. So we set that as our date and set to planning.The first order of business was finding our suckling pig. This turned out to be more difficult than I imagined. After asking the butchers at the grocery stores I frequent, and making calls to a couple of butcher shops that I have used in the past, I ended up finding a source on the Internet that would ship it frozen overnight. Meet Stanley.
The next order of business was menu planning. We wanted to keep our side dishes fairly simple so that the suckling pig would be the star of the show. We had quite a bit of discussion about what to fill our piggy with. We thought bread stuffing would be too heavy (and unnecessary given the rest of the menu), then we considered simply filling the cavity with aromatics (apples, onions and herbs). Then I stumbled on a recipe for stuffing that used a heavy dose of caramelized onion along with bread. We decided to use this idea (just without the bread).
Here's the menu we came up with:
Appetizers:
Cherry Tomato and Fresh Mozzarella SkewersSalami Toscano, Soppressetta, Olives and Grilled VegetablesItalian Plums, Melon and Dried ApricotsMain Course:
Suckling Pig with Caramelized Onion, Figs and Sage
Smoke Roasted Potatoes (from Steven Raichlen's "How to Grill")
Grilled Corn
Greens and Herbs with Peaches, Fresh Mozzarella, Prosciutto and Honey-Lime Vinaigrette
Dessert:
Well, we didn't really come up with dessert and one of our friends volunteered to bring peach cobbler, so we said yes, please.
We started cooking on Friday (well actually, Irene started on Thursday by making a brine). We put piggy in the brine in a cooler outside and then started on the filling.
Here's the ingredients for the filling:
6 or so tablespoons bacon fat (butter would have been good here too, but since we were rendering bacon to top the potatoes, we decided to use the fat for the filling)
9 red onions, sliced5 clove garlic, minced
2 cups white wine (my wine guy recommended a Riesling that worked very well)
1/4 cup fresh sage, minced
1 pint fresh figs, chopped
We started by cooking the bacon over medium heat. Once it was nice and crispy we took it out of the pan (leaving the fat) and then added all of the onion and a heavy sprinkle of kosher salt. Once the onions were soft, we added the garlic, letting it cook for about 30 seconds, then added the wine. We left this to simmer for a couple of hours (which smelled divine). Once the wine had all cooked away, we stirred in the sage and figs and let it cook for just a few minutes more.
Now this was good. I could have eaten an entire bowl of this filling all by itself. We left it to sit until it was cool and then stuck it in the fridge overnight. Then Irene went home and we both went to bed.Irene came back the next day in the afternoon. We took Stanley out of the brine, patted him dry, then stuffed him, trussed him and rubbed him with olive oil. Then we covered his ears with foil (so they wouldn't burn) and propped open his mouth with foil (so we could put a fig in there later).
We followed the cooking instructions from the Joy of Cooking cookbook. They said to start cooking with 30 minutes at 450 degrees, then to reduce the heat to 350 degrees and continue cooking for 2 to 2 1/2 hours more, basting every 20 minutes. We basted with a combination of butter, some more of the Riesling that we used in the filling and maple syrup.
So, you saw that part where it should have taken 2 to 2 1/2 hours at 350 degrees, well Stanley was done a full hour before he should have been. Of course nothing else was ready, so we decided the best course of action was to just turn off the oven and let him rest in there.
Finally, it was time. We took Stanley out of the oven, gingerly lifted him to the platter, them sliced him up. I love this picture above on the right with our boy Jones staring down Stanley.
We drank a toast to Stanley then dug in. So good. As Irene said "Stanley was tender and O so delicious." As the chefs, Irene and I decided that we deserved the tasty bits. As we had consumed plenty of Manhattans, we were adventurous enough to each try an eyeball (which I liked) and then the husband dared me to try brains. Well, now I can say I've tried brains and I never have to do it again. We saved the best for last, one cheek for me and one for Irene. Yum, yum, YUM!I can say, with Irene's prompting I may have gone my entire life without making this meal. So for that I must thank her. This was truly a night and a meal to remember.
Special thanks to Ken Broman, the husband, and whoever picked up my camera and used it on Saturday. This post would have been lacking without you.
Labels: entertaining, pork
The meal today was inspired by the Serious Eats blog. The have decided to start something called the Weekend Cook and Tell: Each Wednesday the food sections from newspapers all over country feature many great ideas and recipes. Here at Serious Eats we are kicking off a new feature called Weekend Cook and Tell. Every Wednesday we are going to share a particularly interesting article or recipe from a food section. We want you to use this as a jumping off point for a weekend cooking project, come up with an idea inspired by the featured article or recipe, cook it over the weekend and then tell us all about it and share photos of your dishes.
For the first go-around they decided to feature an article from the New York Times about "off-cuts" of meat.
These unfamiliar cuts are readily available, inexpensive, and underutilized but full of flavor and really delicious when prepared using the right techniques.
I knew that I had a pork loin (not tenderloin) in the freezer so I started it thawing and considered what to do with it. Now, they recommended it as a cut for roasting, but with the weather warming up I thought grilling was in order. Indirect grilling provides basically the same kind of cooking as roasting, but with the additional deliciousness of charcoal and wood that you can't get from the oven.
A Cook's Illustrated recipe that I had used before came to mind. It featured pork loin stuffed with an apple-cranberry filling. However, apples and cranberries bring to mind feelings of fall and winter, and it is trying desperately to be spring here. I wanted to stick with a fruit filling but the best looking fruit right now is strawberries, and that just didn't seem right. Then I thought about the great mangoes that have just come into season and decided that might be the way to go. I did a little searching online and found a recipe for picadillo that featured mango as one of the ingredients (and seemed like a great start for a flavor profile). After a little more searching and comparing a few different regional recipes, I came up with the following for my version.
Here's the ingredients:
8 oz can tomato sauce
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 onion, diced
1 mango, diced
1/2 cup golden raisins
2 Tablespoon capers
2 clove garlic, minced
2 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
a couple of dashes cayenne
1/2 cup almonds, toasted
3 lb boneless pork loin
In a saucepan I combined all of the filling ingredients except for the almonds and brought the mixture to a boil.
I turned down the heat and let it simmer for 30 minutes.
After the simmering I strained out all the solids.
Then returned the liquids to the pan so that I could make a glaze.
I let the liquid reduce by half.
Meanwhile, I let my stuffing mixture cool, then I stirred in the almonds.
I butterflied the pork loin.
Spread the stuffing over (to within about a 1/2" of the edges).
Then rolled it back up and tied it.
Unfortunately, I seem to have been distracted at this point and I forgot to take a picture (doh).
I let this sit on the counter while I started my coals. I have a fancy charcoal grill that has not only baskets for indirect grilling, but also, propane ignition. So, I loaded the baskets and set them aflame.
While I waited for the coal to be ready for cooking I put some smoking chips in water to soak.
When the coals were ready, I drained the chips and tossed a handful on the coals. Finally I added my pork loin (which I had basted with oil and seasoned with salt and pepper) to the grill in between the baskets and closed the lid (this is what makes it oven like).
I expected the pork to take about an hour to cook, so after a half-hour I flipped the pork over. When the pork was 15 degrees from being done I started basting it with the glaze
While the USDA would like you to cook pork to 160 degrees, I like my pork to have a remnant of moistness (plus I like to live on the edge). So, I cooked it to 135 degrees and then let it rest, covered The carryover cooking brought it to 145 degrees.
One of the ingredients that seemed to be fairly unanimous for picadillo was green olives, but rather than add it to the filling, I decided to add it to my rice side dish. I cooked up some yellow rice with a little butter and then stirred in some sliced green olives.
I sliced a zucchini into planks, drizzled them with oil, seasoned them with salt and pepper and grilled them once I had removed the pork loin.
Once the loin had rested for 10 minutes I sliced it and plated it with some of the rice and zucchini.
How was it? Delicioso! The filling kept the pork super moist and had a nice mix of sweet and sour. I loved the olives in the rice (and I was glad that I opted to put them in the rice rather than the stuffing). This one is going on the permanent repertoire. I might try it again with peaches instead of mango later in the summer. I think that'll be tasty too.
Labels: grill, pork, rice, spring
Today was a beautiful day in Seattle. The husband and I spent quite a bit of the day doing yard work, then retired to the deck for a nice sit in the sun. The grill started calling my name and decided it must be time to cook.A couple of days ago I pulled a pork loin out of the freezer to thaw. So, I knew that would be my protein. I searched through the fridge and found red beets and baby potatoes.I started cooking without really knowing where the meal would end up (therefore I don't have any "here's the ingredients" pictures).I made a beet salad by boiling the beets, peeling them, chopping them and then dressing them with balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper and the good olive oil. Then I topped it with blue cheese and cashews.
The potatoes were even easier. I washed them, boiled them and then tossed them with butter, chives and smoked salt.
My first thought for the pork was to make the Whiskey and Brown Sugar glaze that I made a while back for some grilled acorn squash. Alas, we had consumed all the whiskey. I started throwing a few thing in the pan and ended up with this.Spicy-Sweet Soy Glazed Pork Tenderloin1/4 cup soy sauce1/4 cup triple sec1/8 cup molasses1 Tablespoon brown sugarSriracha to taste1 pork tenderloinI started by combining everything but the pork loin in a small saucepan. I put it over medium heat and let it reduce by half. Meanwhile I preheated my grill and then added my seasoned pork loin to cook. When the pork tenderloin was almost done I started brushing it with many coats of glaze. When it was done I let it rest for a few minutes and then sliced it. I served the leftover glaze alongside as a sauce.
I enjoyed everything and the husband liked most everything. The potatoes (which are one of my clients favorites) were yummy. He said the beets were great after he got rid of the blue cheese and cashews (but I liked them with). And the pork tenderloin glaze ended up kind of like a spicy teriyaki sauce, what's not to like about that.The best part was sitting on the deck, eating in the sunshine and open air. Summer's coming, I can feel it!Labels: beets, pork, potatoes, summer
2 Tablespoon kosher salt
1/2 pound yams (garnet or otherwise)
2 Tablespoon butter
I then put this into a Ziploc bag, added the sugar and the water and shook the mixture until the sugar and salt had dissolved. Then I added the pork chops and tossed the bag in the fridge for a couple of hours (turning it once).
The potatoes were inspired by a blog entry from the Food52 Website. I followed the method just about verbatim so I won't repeat it here (but they took about 45 minutes total). I haven't tried it with regular potatoes (as it is written) but that will be up very soon.
How was it? Well, basically the whole time I was eating I was saying "nom, nom, nom this is so good". The husband agreed and said that the caramelized pears were way better than any applesauce would be.
The next order of business was menu planning. We wanted to keep our side dishes fairly simple so that the suckling pig would be the star of the show. We had quite a bit of discussion about what to fill our piggy with. We thought bread stuffing would be too heavy (and unnecessary given the rest of the menu), then we considered simply filling the cavity with aromatics (apples, onions and herbs). Then I stumbled on a recipe for stuffing that used a heavy dose of caramelized onion along with bread. We decided to use this idea (just without the bread). 
Now this was good. I could have eaten an entire bowl of this filling all by itself. We left it to sit until it was cool and then stuck it in the fridge overnight. Then Irene went home and we both went to bed.
We followed the cooking instructions from the Joy of Cooking cookbook. They said to start cooking with 30 minutes at 450 degrees, then to reduce the heat to 350 degrees and continue cooking for 2 to 2 1/2 hours more, basting every 20 minutes. We basted with a combination of butter, some more of the Riesling that we used in the filling and maple syrup.
So, you saw that part where it should have taken 2 to 2 1/2 hours at 350 degrees, well Stanley was done a full hour before he should have been. Of course nothing else was ready, so we decided the best course of action was to just turn off the oven and let him rest in there.
Finally, it was time. We took Stanley out of the oven, gingerly lifted him to the platter, them sliced him up. I love this picture above on the right with our boy Jones staring down Stanley.
We drank a toast to Stanley then dug in. So good. As Irene said "Stanley was tender and O so delicious." As the chefs, Irene and I decided that we deserved the tasty bits. As we had consumed plenty of Manhattans, we were adventurous enough to each try an eyeball (which I liked) and then the husband dared me to try brains. Well, now I can say I've tried brains and I never have to do it again. We saved the best for last, one cheek for me and one for Irene. Yum, yum, YUM!
After the simmering I strained out all the solids.
Then returned the liquids to the pan so that I could make a glaze.
I let the liquid reduce by half.
Spread the stuffing over (to within about a 1/2" of the edges).
While I waited for the coal to be ready for cooking I put some smoking chips in water to soak.
When the coals were ready, I drained the chips and tossed a handful on the coals. Finally I added my pork loin (which I had basted with oil and seasoned with salt and pepper) to the grill in between the baskets and closed the lid (this is what makes it oven like).
I expected the pork to take about an hour to cook, so after a half-hour I flipped the pork over. When the pork was 15 degrees from being done I started basting it with the glaze
I sliced a zucchini into planks, drizzled them with oil, seasoned them with salt and pepper and grilled them once I had removed the pork loin.
The potatoes were even easier. I washed them, boiled them and then tossed them with butter, chives and smoked salt.
My first thought for the pork was to make the Whiskey and Brown Sugar glaze that I made a while back for some grilled acorn squash. Alas, we had consumed all the whiskey. I started throwing a few thing in the pan and ended up with this.
I enjoyed everything and the husband liked most everything. The potatoes (which are one of my clients favorites) were yummy. He said the beets were great after he got rid of the blue cheese and cashews (but I liked them with). And the pork tenderloin glaze ended up kind of like a spicy teriyaki sauce, what's not to like about that.
